Haemaphysalis cornupunctata sp. n. and H. kashmirensis sp. n. from Kashmir, with Notes on H. sundrai Sharif and H. sewelli Sharif of India and Pakistan (Ixodoidea, Ixodidae)

The species newly described and redescribed herein are of special phylogenetic interest. Each is closely related to Haemaphysalis punctata Canestrini and Fanzago, and thus belongs to a homogeneous group intermediate between the two most primitive subgenera of Haemaphysalis, Alloceraea Schulze, and Allophysalis Hoogstraal, and most if not all other haemaphysalid tick species. H. cornupunctata sp. n. and H. kashmirensis sp .n. were taken in Kashmir by the junior author in April-May 1959, during a collecting trip for the Virus Research Centre, Poona.1 Owing to the possibility that these ticks might represent the Indian and Pakistani species H. sundrai and H. sewelli, both described by Sharif (1928) though not quite adequately for present diagnostic needs, the senior author, to whom the Kashmir specimens had been sent for study, requested the loan of Sharif cotypes from the Indian Museum. These were kindly secured by Dr. G. Owen Evans of the British Museum (Natural History) and studied there by the junior author who had in the meantime transferred to London. We are